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Tuse Service Provider
Tuse Ltd- Connecting on demand Artisan with end users
Category:
Product Design
Client:
Babalola Willams
Duration:
Discovery to Launch
Role:
Product Design
Platform:
Cross-Functional Squad
01
Context
01 / Project Background
Context & Background
TUSE was created to solve a two-sided gap in the service economy: customers struggled to find trusted, available artisans, while artisans relied on word-of-mouth and lacked consistent access to work. TUSE bridges this gap through a trusted marketplace that connects customers with verified artisans and manages the journey from discovery and booking to payment and reviews. Customers gain a simpler way to find, communicate with, and securely hire professionals, while artisans gain greater visibility, consistent opportunities, and tools to manage jobs, payments, and reputation.
02
The Problem
02 / The Challenge
The Problem & Challenge
Building TUSE from scratch was challenging because the marketplace had to balance two very different user needs, customer convenience and security (payment and physical) and artisan flexibility and security, while establishing trust between strangers who had no prior relationship or shared context to rely on. The biggest unknowns were concentrated in the mechanics of the exchange itself: how users would discover and negotiate services, how pricing should work, and how to handle payments, cancellations, revisions, and disputes without creating friction that would push either side away from the platform. How to make both users immune from physical danger. Each of those open questions had to be resolved in a way that felt fair to both parties, since a decision that favored the customer could easily undermine the artisan's willingness to participate, and vice versa.
03
My Role & Team
03 / Collaboration
My Role & Team
I owned the product design from 0→1, defining the core flows, information architecture, wireframes, and UI system for both customers and artisans. I designed the transactional experience across booking, negotiation, payments, job tracking, and account management, while defining key UX rules around trust, verification, pricing, cancellations, and service completion.
04
Process
04 / Design Process
Design Process & Explorations
Discovery focused on understanding how customers and artisans currently find, vet, hire, and pay for services. This revealed key pain points around trust, pricing, communication, and payments. I mapped both audiences’ needs into user journeys and core flows, covering discovery, negotiation, booking, payment, completion, and reviews. I then used these journeys to define the information architecture and test key edge cases before moving into wireframes and visual design.
05
The Solution
05 / Shipped Interface
Solution
The MVP connected customers and artisans through a structured marketplace, covering service discovery, verified profiles, requests, negotiation, booking, secure payments, tracking, messaging, completion, and reviews. Artisans also had tools for job and earnings management.
06
Uiux design
Visual Solution
Simplified service discovery and booking
Created a seamless booking flow that allows customers to discover services, submit requests, and book artisans with minimal friction
Pricing and In-app negotiation
Enabled customers and artisans to discuss requirements, negotiate prices, and agree on service terms before proceeding to payment.
Secure payments through escrow
Introduced an escrow system that holds customer payments until the job is completed and approved, protecting both parties against payment-related uncertainty.
Real-time artisan tracking
ntegrated geolocation features that allow customers to track an artisan's location, monitor their arrival, and stay informed throughout the service process, improving transparency and customer confidence.
Artisan earnings and business management
Provided artisans with tools to track earnings, monitor transactions, and manage their work. Customers could also tip artisans after satisfactory service, encouraging quality delivery.
Verified artisan profiles
Introduced identity and document verification to help customers make informed decisions and build confidence in the people they invite into their homes.
In-app safety and SOS
Design quick-trigger SOS alerts and structured reporting flows to ensure users protection and swift emergency resolution.
07
Impact & Results
06 / Outcomes & Metrics
Impact & Key Results
The product was still in the early-stage validation phase, so I did not have reliable adoption metrics to report. What I could observe was early qualitative feedback rather than quantitative signal. Users responded positively to the clearer booking flow, the transparent negotiation process, and the structured payment and job-completion experience — the three areas where the original, informal way of hiring artisans had been least predictable. That feedback confirmed the direction of the concept without yet providing the volume of usage needed to validate it at scale.
08
Reflection
07 / Key Takeaways
Reflection & Lessons Learned
My biggest takeaway was that 0→1 product design is less about designing screens and more about solving ambiguity. I learned to think beyond individual features and consider the complete ecosystem — user needs, trust, business logic, edge cases, and how both sides of a marketplace interact with one another. It reinforced the importance of starting with the problem, validating assumptions early, and designing the system before polishing the interface. Looking forward, the natural next step would be to move from early validation into measurement, so the decisions made on judgement can be tested against real usage.
